A court in China has sentenced three front-end developers to three years in prison each after finding them guilty of stealing sensitive crypto wallet data through a malicious software backdoor. The engineers, identified as Liu, Zhang, and Dong, were also fined RMB 30,000 each.
China: 3 iToken Engineers Jailed for Crypto Crime
The convicted group secretly implanted a backdoor into the iToken app through which they illegally got hold of users’ private keys, mnemonic phrases, and other sensitive data.
This stolen data was then uploaded to a remote VPS server, where the group controlled it and later downloaded them to a local system for exploiting the data further.
According to court documents and media reports, they illegally obtained over 27,000 mnemonic phrases and 10,000 private keys (after deduplication), which were used to create nearly 19,500 unique wallet addresses. Each culprit played a specific role in the conspiracy, for instance, Liu developed the request logic code, Zhang set up the backend server and handled the Android version of the app, and Dong registered the domain and managed the iOS app’s data upload and encryption.
All three have admitted to the charges after their arrest. The court concluded that their actions seriously violated China’s regulations on computer information systems. Their conduct was ruled as a clear case of illegally obtaining computer system data, with particularly severe consequences.
In addition to their prison time and fines, the engineers have been banned from working in internet security or any network-related roles for three years following the end of their sentences.
Also Read: China’s FTX Creditors Concerned Over Repayment Amid Tariff Trade War
